


Anything but Small Potatoes

by Arithanas



Category: Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-10 14:16:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5589295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arithanas/pseuds/Arithanas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raoul only have a confessor he could trust, because that man had his silence proved. Grimaud PoV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anything but Small Potatoes

**Author's Note:**

> Happy (belated) saint's day, [Mordioux](http://mordioux.tumblr.com/)!

It has been a good week, nice weather for autumn. Remarkably, my master was in high spirits, he even smiled and that’s a real improvement. The reason was clear: Raoul was home, safe and sound, from the frontline. I wished I could share his happiness, but there was something in my young master expression that made me uneasy, this kid was terribly changed and war had nothing to do with it.

There was nothing I could do, so I pushed my worries aside. For a week I almost never thought of it until young master Raoul came to me the night before his appointed return to the battlefield, in his face I noticed he had the same expression he used when his spirit couldn't understand why the Count behaves like he does, but this time his father was not the source of his chagrin.

He came to me because he felt I could understand his turmoil. The little master Raoul, like his father, was seldom wrong.

I was in the kitchen, cutting up half a bushel of potatoes from the bumper crop. Charlot’s wife will make them a soup for the service. By the time my young master walked into the kitchen all the skins were properly put into a bucket for the compost. I acknowledged his presence with a short nod; he gave me a smile and sat by my side in one of the long benches.

"I have sinned, Grimaud," he started with a whisper and I put my paring knife on the table; those potatoes could wait and I was not sure I won't to cut a finger off my hand at such important words. "I have prevaricated and have tried something that was not meant to me, something that belonged to someone else. I cannot tell the Count, because I am ashamed to admit that he was right and I was not strong enough to hold my promise to Louisa..."

Poor kid, I rose and move to his side before passing my arm over his shoulders. That kid was about to cry and he never was one to spill a tear easily.

"I'm a thief," Raoul said and let his head rest on my shoulder, like so many times before. "Worse than a thief..."

I shook my head and my cheek brushed against Raoul's fine hair. My right hand pressed the kid against my heart, wishing to have a better way to convey my support and my disagreement.

"Thank you, Grimaud, but you are mistaken," Raoul insisted, resisting the comfort. "I knew well what I was doing, and I did it, anyway."

I put my hand over his left lapel and then used my other hand to point upwards.

"What about the Count?"

I slapped him gently on the nape and insisted on pointing upwards. That seemed to avert the self-loathing tears this time.

"Oh, God knows what was in my heart!"

‘Seldom wrong’, I reminded myself, didn't mean ‘mostly right’.

I raised my finger upwards again and then added a negative sign before signaling my own chest.

"I have sinned!" Raoul repeated, understanding that this old Grimaud was no God and needed an explanation.

I nodded and did my best to no roll my eyes in silent exasperation. The repetition didn’t improve my understanding

"Are the details really relevant?" Raoul complained and tried to face me, his torturer; with the same calculated expression I have seen in his father many, many times. "I have sinned, that's enough."

I raised and took one of the potatoes I have been cutting. I presented the viscount a whole potato and then a half, maybe the kid was brilliant enough to understand my meaning.

"It seems, _maître_ Grimaud, that you dare to question me," Raoul said.

The tone of his voice… he had learned that tone while seated over the knee of his father. I shrugged, it wasn't me the one who was about to pout and cry.

“Please, Grimaud, don’t be cross at me now!” Raoul complained and crossed his arms over his chest, “You are the only one I can speak to now, and I know you are going to sneer at me. Please, my old friend…”

I let my head roll and returned to my potatoes. Men of his blood don’t open up if they don’t want to and those are a lot of potatoes.

“Can you hear me without condemning me?”

I scoffed. I seriously doubted anyone would hear any word from his mouth without judging him. Little master Raoul was not his father, who can lie well enough to convince himself; the Count’s mendacity was so well rehearsed that he even forgot the truth.

“At least can you lend me your ear?”

I pointed with my knife to a quarter of potato and a whole potato. We cannot advance until he answered my question.

With an exaggerated sigh, Raoul chose the whole _boisseau_ with a dramatic sweep of his hand. I smiled at him and made a sign with my hands and two extended fingers over my temples.

“Go on and make short mockery of me!” the little master seemed annoyed before he said with a heavy sigh. “I feel like Beelzebub himself…”

I patted his shoulder and took one of my discarded potatoes; that one I was saving for planting it in the garden again, those eyes sprouting from its surface would make a handsome plant. I offered it to my young master; surely, he would understand my meaning. His reaction was strange, he tilted his head and didn’t even try to take it from my hand, like when he was a kid, then he cracked a smile and that became a grin and suddenly he busted on an unbridled fit of mirth that befuddled me.

“Oh, Grimaud, forgive me!” Raoul exclaimed between outbursts of laughter, “I forgot you can’t read my spirits!”

I just remained there agog and puzzled. The story, it seemed, was more convoluted than I expected.

Well, senselessness runs in his family, on both sides, I couldn’t judge the kid too harshly, but looking him laughing like that at one serious question was startling to say the least. Maybe he didn’t have a girl pregnant ―not that such a circumstance would be the end of the world―, maybe his sin was graver. Did this kid kill a man outside the battlefield? Did he put down his weight by a married woman? I was beginning to think he had hanged that poor lame kid from a tree when my young master sat because his sides were hurting him.

“Oh, Grimaud, you can’t commence to understand the situation,” Raoul said and dried the corner of his eye with the cuff of his shirt before starting again with the mad laughter.

That was a bad habit I never managed to eradicate and that displeased me greatly; I just stay there, on my foot, judging his bad manners when I noticed how he put the elbows on his knees and cast his eyes to me. A long shiver shook me, those eyes were the same haunted eyes his father cast on me on occasion, mostly when regret clutched him.

Maybe this kid really killed that child…

“He’s getting married, Grimaud,” he said in one mirthful exclamation before collapsing in heartbreaking sobs.

Nothing his father ever said or did prepare me for that revelation. I felt my hands shook so much that I need to put the knife down again. Now and then, those words haunted my own imagination because there was a summer in 1620 when I spent a whole night repeating them instead of doing something productive. I could have spared my master and myself a lot of tears, if I just opened my mouth in time.

Now, the fact that there was a “he” involved, whoever he happens to be, was not the end of the world either. His father certainly could manage both sides of the argument with ease; this kid was proof of his father being able to stand his ground on the wrong side of the blankets.

Loving a “him”, I discovered with the years, was not a shame.

Loving someone who was willing to belong to someone else, that’s just hurtful, but, so far, no one has died because of it. But trying to explain to this kid that the issue was small potatoes was a hopeless cause. At the moment, this was the only issue in the world for him.

I sat by his side and opened my arms. Raoul heeded the invitation and let me hold him while he cried.

"Patience," I said to my young master in a coarse whisper, "Hope".

Whoever this man was, if he was willing to strip this kid from his last shred of innocence, he will not be able to keep his matrimonial vows.

And if this kid was anything like his father, he wouldn’t be able to resist him. I just let him pour his hurt. Someday, Raoul de Bragelonne would see how true this was.


End file.
